This is a true account of a paranormal experience I had about twenty two years ago. One weekend, my sister asked my mother is she would look after her children while she and her husband went out for the evening. I went with my mother to help her, and drove us there. After they went out, my mother and I organised the children to bed , and sat down together to watch television in the living room. It was about nine thirty or ten at night.

We were watching television when my mother said, “What’s that noise.” I said, “I can’t hear anything. What noise? I said it was the television.” She said, “No, that noise, can’t you hear it, it’s getting louder.” So, I did start to hear the noise she was talking about as it grew louder, and you could hear it a bit louder than the television. It sounded a bit like a house alarm, or fire alarm type of noise. But there wasn’t any alarm going off in the house, and it wasn’t coming from outside. The noise kept getting louder. I stood up and went into the kitchen to double check that it wasn’t an alarm in the kitchen, or in the house. The noise grew louder and louder until it filled the house. My mum and I had to shout at the tops of our voices to hear each other. The noise was deafening.

Worried about the children sleeping upstairs, I ran upstairs and checked in each bedroom. All were fast asleep. In my oldest nephew’s bedroom, I tried to wake him. Gently nudging him , wondering why he and the others had not woken because of the noise. I looked at the curtain to the back garden. The curtains were shut so I could not see outside. I knew at the back of the house was empty farmers fields. I did not want to draw the curtains open in case I saw something that shouldn’t be there. Instead I tried again to wake my nephew, but it wasn’t possible to wake him up.

I went to the stairs, and my mother was there on the top of the stairs. She shouted to me, “I’m going outside, I can’t stand it.” And she ran down the stairs. I ran after her, and caught her at the door, and stopped her opening it. “No”, I shouted. “Stay inside. Don’t go out.” I had seen too many horror films to know that you never should go outside. And how could we go outside, and leave four children upstairs asleep, not knowing what was happening. I picked up the telephone, I couldn’t hear the dialing tone because of the noise, but I dialed 999 for the police. And then held the phone up in the air so that if anyone answered they would hear the noise, and come. I dialled my brother’s house as well and did the same.

I didn’t know what else to do. My mother and I held on to each other at the bottom of the stairs, and we kept looking around to see what was going on. Watching for anything unusual. There wasn’t any thing to see in the house out of the ordinary. The noise filled the house, it was everywhere. Then the noise level went down, and stopped.

We were filled with relief, and emotion. There wasn’t anything we could do. I made us both a cup of tea. And we waited for my sister and her husband to come back. They were very surprised at what we told them. But didn’t believe that anything had really happened, because it could not be explained. There was no explanation to where the noise had come from in the house, there wasn’t anything in the house to cause such a noise. Of course the police didn’t come, and my brother, when later asked, said his telephone didn’t ring. That week, I went to the next door neighbour to see it he had heard it, and he had not heard anything. The fact that it didn’t wake up the children, is very strange as well. But my mother and I both heard the noise, and to this day, I cannot explain the cause of it.